At the end of January 1917, the Catalan politician and businessman Francesc Cambó Batlle was invited to deliver a series of lectures in the city of Bilbao. The trip was an initiative of the Chamber of Commerce of the Biscayan capital, and one of the local figures most enthusiastic about those presentations was the representative of the Basque shipowners, Ramón de la Sota, who was also active in the political arena. In this field, De la Sota played a prominent role within the Basque Nationalist Party and was convinced that the abertzale organization should model itself on the theses of Cambó and the Regionalist League that he led.